Page 92 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

Callie gives me the red pens.

I hold them for exactly two seconds before putting them beside her book, where she can reach them and where I can still see them. She watches me place them, and the corner of her mouth lifts.

“You moved my green one yesterday,” she says.

“It was too close to the edge.” I catch her opening her mouth and I shake my head. “I know it was on the desk but it could’ve fallen.”

Dash lowers his face for a moment, but I hear the breath he tries to hide. Callie reaches around me and presses one finger against the middle of his chest.

“Don’t encourage him.”

“I’m not.” Dash looks at the pens, then at me. “I do understand the argument.”

Callie shakes her head, though she is smiling when she says, “Of course you do.”

I settle beside the blue pillow, fitting my body around the new shape of the nest. Callie sits near my hip with Sloane’s shirt falling over one shoulder, and Dash remains beside her instead of at the edge. I wait a moment before leaning into Callie’s side, my purr filling the room while she wraps one arm around my shoulders.

Footsteps sound in the hallway a few minutes later. Idris pauses in the doorway with two glasses of water in one hand and a mug in the other, his hair still damp from the shower and his shirt unbuttoned at the throat.

His eyes move over Callie’s things and the blue pillow tucked into the blankets near my Beta’s head. He steps inside and puts one glass beside me. The mug goes near Dash and then Idris holds the second glass while he looks at Callie.

“Where do you want yours?”

Callie’s arm tightens around me before she nods to the space beside her book, between the charger and the glasses case.

“There.”

Calliope

By Thursday, the flowers on Dash’s kitchen table have been replaced once already. The first bundle came from Sloane, pale yellow roses mixed with tiny white flowers he couldn’t name. He stood in the doorway holding them too tightly, looking like he’d rather face an armed intruder than explain why he’d stopped at the grocery store because something in the display reminded him of me.

Theo stole three stems for the nest before Idris found an actual vase in one of Dash’s attic boxes, and the rest spent two days brightening the kitchen until the petals began to soften.

The second arrangement is smaller. Sloane brings it home after checking the security work around campus, sets it beside my coffee, then slides one hand around my waist before I can thank him. His mouth finds mine while I’m still holding the mug, and I have to put it down before I spill coffee over both of us.

“You’re hovering again,” I murmur against his lips, though my fingers have already curled into the front of his shirt.

“I’m kissing you,” he says, his hand moving lower on my hip as he pulls me closer. His eyes stay on my face, watching even while his mouth brushes mine again. “Hovering happens from farther away.”

The answer should annoy me more than it does. Instead, I let him kiss me until the coffee cools and Theo wanders in wearing one of my cardigans with the sleeves covering half his hands.

Theo looks at the flowers, then at Sloane’s hand on my waist. His expression turns thoughtful before he crosses the kitchen and presses himself against my side, claiming the space without asking anyone else to move.

“Those are better,” he says, touching one of the darker yellow petals. “The first ones smelled too sharp near the pillows.”

Sloane doesn’t argue with him. He kisses the top of Theo’s head, then returns his mouth to my temple before leaving for the office with Idris. The whole interaction takes less than a minute, yet warmth follows me through the morning like someone tucked it beneath my skin.

Dash brings me something from the campus shop that afternoon.

He comes into my office after knocking, even though the door is already open, carrying an insulated mug in one hand and astack of departmental forms in the other. The mug is deep green with a wide base and a lid that locks properly, the exact kind I paused over last week before deciding the one I already owned was fine.

“You didn’t need to buy this,” I tell him, turning it in my hands as he closes the door behind him.

“I know.” Dash sets the forms on the corner of my desk and steps between my knees where I’m perched against the edge. His hand settles at my lower back, familiar and warm, while the other brushes a strand of hair away from my face. “You looked at it three times and still put it back.”

“That doesn’t mean I wanted it.”

His thumb moves once against my spine. “You also looked annoyed when the lid on your old one leaked into your bag.”